Delofasht.4231

> @"Xstein.2187" said:

> > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > I disagree with the assessment that AI attacks are player controlled, in some ways yes, but in other ways no. It is the player determining when to start the attack, but the AI has to track, find, then start and finish the animation, and does not move while performing an attack like we as a player would. The result is that a phantasms starts an attack, but the enemy runs out of range and the phantasm now misses completely. If however it has been coming from the Mesmer themselves, the animation would have been performed while moving to keep the target in range and the attack would have finished and hit. Examples of this are Phantasmal Swordsman and Phantasmal Mage attacks just to hit easy ones. Same for clone ambush attacks through Infinite Horizon, they stop to perform the attack and do not follow while performing the attack (except Mirage Thrust which can just flat out miss if they step on a rock or get slightly above the clone). Then we have damage from shatters, where again the clones need to close that distance and we as a player are completely reliant on the AI pathing for the damage to ever get there. Thus our build and style of play ends up being necessary to get in melee range and dump a bunch of clones there to pop, and all the while hope that our enemy is bad enough to allow so many of these things to happen. Or in the case of clones ambush damage, we are reliant on the enemy not using LoS and AoE autoattacks to kill them all.

> >

> > Reliability of damage is a huge problem for Mesmer, part of that is clones, part is phantasms, all of it is AI issues with a mobile thinking opponent. In PvE almost none of this matters but the dps is lower on Mesmer outside of Chrono (due to multipliers and enemies not cleansing slow, which means it doesn’t work in PvP).

> >

> I agree that this sort of landed reliability can be a problem and anoying. However, I still wouldn't call this an AI issue as I still wouldn't say artificial intelligence is in the question based on the definition of AI. If a player playing warrior presses great sword 3, pixels on the screen do a whirlwind attack animation. If a player playing mesmer presses great sword 4, pixels on the screen do a whirlwind attack. Both are dodge-able and in both cases running toward the enemy doesn't 'add' to the speed of the whirl attack (it is a fixed speed for both). So, why does mesmer sword 4 seem like it misses more? Well for one thing the attack animation is waaaaay longer than warrior. This is because instead of you just acting as a swinging dodgable projectile heading towards the opponent, you swing your sword first and THEN a swinging dodgable projectile heads towards your opponent. This pretty much doubles the cast time from the opponents point of view. Yes, this makes it so you can potentially do another attack while your projectile (the phantasm) is moving towards your opponent. However, IMO, it would be much better quality of life if when you press gs4 as a mesmer, the phantasm is instantly summoned and THEN while you are swinging your great sword, the phantasm is whirling towards your opponent at the exact same time so that your animations line up with that of the projectile. The way it is set up now, although phantasms still act as projectiles, they always act like delayed projectiles. Same with sword and mage. The distance the phantasm pops up is based on your distance from the target. However, once again, you have a cast time and THEN your phantasm projectile is fired instead of both happening simultaneously like it is with every other class I can think of.

>

> Yes, it is also possible for stuff, like a rock, to get in the way of the attack. The problem with this though, once again isn't that it is an AI attack, but that although the phantasm always shows up at a predictable distance from the target, its cardinal directions are random. It can come from the left, right, in front, etc.

> For example, you could remove the unpredictability completely and have the phantasms, say, just come from their left sides/your right side 100% of the time. Although perhaps more reliable from obstacles, this wouldn't be changing AI, just the randomness of what direction the attack comes from. Therefore, if there is an obstacle in the way on the right side, you can anticipate and wait or change directions before you do the attack so you don't waste it. However, with this scenario you would also loose the unpredictability in cardinal direction from your opponents point of view as well. Therefore, both have there ups and downs.

>

> Mirage is weird. It is kinda mixed, and only with one specific trait, IH, traited. At this point in time and since IH works so much better with condi, I would rather just nerf the ambush attacks and give the condi damage back to the player's normal attacks to compensate. As it is right now, IH is just too paramount of a trait with condi builds. Clone ambush attacks being too powerful also indirectly makes deceptive evasion far too important to trait with mirage as well IMO.

>

> > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > Shift the damage to the Mesmer, the reliability of the damage will increase, numbers can then be tuned to do less burst and thus cooldowns reduced to make more dps.

> >

> > How to achieve the change:

> >

> > Make clones indestructible, either having no health bars or going to 1 health and never dying, immune to cc and movement impairing effects. Clones run to the Mesmer for a shatter and empower the next attack which then applies the shatter effects. Ambush damage and condition application removed from clones, player ambush attacks now scale with number of clones out (when traited with IH). Animations remain for clone ambushes, but they are just for show. Phantasm cast times removed, but both the phantasm and the player perform the animation and damage is only applied by the player, phantasms like clones would be immune to CC and slows, movement imparing effects do not really matter as the damage is really applied by the Mesmer.

> >

> > Everything here keeps the animations of the profession, but significantly increases reliability of the damage sources so they can finally be tuned as having damage, instead of sometimes having damage and sometimes being crowd controlled, line of sighted, outranged, or killed in combat.

> >

> > I really do appreciate the idea that AI executed attacks are extensions of the player, but it is only true when there are no delays between the pressing of the skill and the eventual damage. There are just so many opportunities for enemies to avoid the damage in so many ways. The phantasm overhaul was actually a result of trying to nerf Mesmer in a way that would break stealth summoning, since the phantasm summons now apply some damage on cast.

> >

> > Edit: Another thing I forgot, clones do not prof sigils or runes, damage from phantasms are based on inherited stats and do not gain damage form the players boons.... so on and so on. Huge difference between AI damage sources and player controlled ones.

>

> I think this is great for another elite spec, but it is just never going to happen across the board. If it also happens across the board, clones becoming invulnerable would also cause most of the clone producing traits to have the opposite affect and become almost completely useless. Additionally, maybe it is because I don't play the game as much as I did when phantasms were what I would truly consider AI, which was more annoying, but I just don't have as much of a problem with reliability as many make it seem. Yes, opponents can dodge or avoid a phantasm attack. However, all projectiles need to be dodgeable, avoidable, and have a range limit that players can move out of. That is just counterplay. Catching on rocks? Not so much. However, I really don't notice this happen as often as people may make it sound and don't think it affects the game even close to as much as say old school phantasms did. Finally, yes, I agree 100% with the edit you added.

>

> p.s. Perhaps contrary to popular belief, if clones ran towards the opponent while performing the ambush attack, although it would be a more reliable source of damage, it would actually have MORE of the characteristics of AI.

> All together, some of the mesmer attacks could be far more reliable (the immobilization on sword 3 is the first thing that comes to mind). However, the definition of AI isn't the same as the definition of reliable.

>

I never mind disagreeing with you XStein, because you are civil about it overall.

My assessment of illusion attacks compared to normal attacks is that they have a greater number of imposed rules to follow and thus create greater variance based on situation. They also have more coding required for each individual attack, creating greater potential for bugs and breaks in the gameplay. All this while not following normal rules of attacks, that of starting when the cast is finished (phantasms and clones have their own cast times that need to respect being in range to start the cast first and then not moving with the target at all).

To make Mesmer illusion attacks work like other abilities would require retuning ever single attack individually... a rework nightmare as tuning for each individually is a mess. Changing everything to zero for illusions means just tuning the Mesmer abilities to increase their damage either on the end of the cast, or as the result of an animation already in use on phantasms and clones but applied when the skill resolves or is pushed (for channeled attacks like Phantasmal Warden). Thus all current effects get directly inherited to the Mesmer, and numbers tuned down on damage output as reliability is increased. Reliability increases, damage decreases, less situational damage variance (extremes between different gameplay areas).

Really it always comes back down to illusions being able to be interacted with as the visuals of the profession are fine overall. Though tweaking the animations to better fit the effects of my proposed changes to application of damage would benefit players readability of Mesmer damage output.

Two other changes that I really feel should be applied is that of allowing illusions to be created and follow the Mesmer outside of combat with my proposed changes and that they do not attack targets that the Mesmer is not on (since they would do no damage anyhow, it is really only about the animations).

Deleted, broken browser page.

I disagree with the assessment that AI attacks are player controlled, in some ways yes, but in other ways no. It is the player determining when to start the attack, but the AI has to track, find, then start and finish the animation, and does not move while performing an attack like we as a player would. The result is that a phantasms starts an attack, but the enemy runs out of range and the phantasm now misses completely. If however it has been coming from the Mesmer themselves, the animation would have been performed while moving to keep the target in range and the attack would have finished and hit. Examples of this are Phantasmal Swordsman and Phantasmal Mage attacks just to hit easy ones. Same for clone ambush attacks through Infinite Horizon, they stop to perform the attack and do not follow while performing the attack (except Mirage Thrust which can just flat out miss if they step on a rock or get slightly above the clone). Then we have damage from shatters, where again the clones need to close that distance and we as a player are completely reliant on the AI pathing for the damage to ever get there. Thus our build and style of play ends up being necessary to get in melee range and dump a bunch of clones there to pop, and all the while hope that our enemy is bad enough to allow so many of these things to happen. Or in the case of clones ambush damage, we are reliant on the enemy not using LoS and AoE autoattacks to kill them all.

Reliability of damage is a huge problem for Mesmer, part of that is clones, part is phantasms, all of it is AI issues with a mobile thinking opponent. In PvE almost none of this matters but the dps is lower on Mesmer outside of Chrono (due to multipliers and enemies not cleansing slow, which means it doesn’t work in PvP).

Shift the damage to the Mesmer, the reliability of the damage will increase, numbers can then be tuned to do less burst and thus cooldowns reduced to make more dps.

How to achieve the change:

Make clones indestructible, either having no health bars or going to 1 health and never dying, immune to cc and movement impairing effects. Clones run to the Mesmer for a shatter and empower the next attack which then applies the shatter effects. Ambush damage and condition application removed from clones, player ambush attacks now scale with number of clones out (when traited with IH). Animations remain for clone ambushes, but they are just for show. Phantasm cast times removed, but both the phantasm and the player perform the animation and damage is only applied by the player, phantasms like clones would be immune to CC and slows, movement imparing effects do not really matter as the damage is really applied by the Mesmer.

Everything here keeps the animations of the profession, but significantly increases reliability of the damage sources so they can finally be tuned as having damage, instead of sometimes having damage and sometimes being crowd controlled, line of sighted, outranged, or killed in combat.

I really do appreciate the idea that AI executed attacks are extensions of the player, but it is only true when there are no delays between the pressing of the skill and the eventual damage. There are just so many opportunities for enemies to avoid the damage in so many ways. The phantasm overhaul was actually a result of trying to nerf Mesmer in a way that would break stealth summoning, since the phantasm summons now apply some damage on cast.

Edit: Another thing I forgot, clones do not prof sigils or runes, damage from phantasms are based on inherited stats and do not gain damage form the players boons.... so on and so on. Huge difference between AI damage sources and player controlled ones.

> @"Axl.8924" said:

> > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > @"Axl.8924" said:

> > > I noticed hybrid chrono is still rated highly for raids on discretize not sure how up to date it is.

> > >

> > > https://discretize.eu/builds/mesmer/hybrid-chronomancer

> >

> > PvE is not a particularly hostile environment for Mesmer of any kind, but shows us how even there, the damage concerns and numbers tuning is badly off. Mesmer lacks good dps outside of being reliant on a few traits in a single line of an elite specialization to attain comparable numbers to others. This is noticed in WvW in large scale where suddenly clones and shatters can no longer be appropriately used and thus the damage drops off to practically nothing, so Mesmer was even more reliant on utilities.

> >

> > This illustrates why the profession resource needs a rework and potentially changes to phantasms as well. Consistency and reliability need to be improved so numbers tuning can be fair across the board, in PvE and PvP game modes. Current design was always flawed, but the devs did not want to change it in the past.

>

> What happened to mirage? on discretize mirage isn't even listed now. The two major builds for Mesmer are power chronomancer and hybrid chronomancer. it literally fell out of meta.

>

> That's just crazy that the newest elite fell out of meta in pve.

In short, Mesmer was nerfed in so many areas across the board that only Chrono manages to be PvE viable due to a few traits that were not nerfed because they only function well in PvE (where enemies cannot remove slow from themselves and extra damage multipliers get to kick in). Mirage in particular received numerous nerfs to various damaging weapon skills and traits... in PvE this meant being relegated to open world only or being carried by friends in raids and such.

PvP requests for balance affect PvE pretty harshly very often, because numerically Mesmer as a whole “should” have the appropriate damage output, but can never live up to that because their resource sometimes gets destroyed by AoE effects or interrupted randomly, never mind AI pathing and target selection potential issues. Mesmer as a whole needs decoupling from the reliance on a destroyable resource and AI damage sources and it put in the control of the player so that timing and placement is better. Doing that while retaining the visuals and thematic elements is not nearly as difficult as it would seem, but has gone ignored since the beginning of this game. Somewhere, someone does not think Mesmer issues could possibly be resolved easily so they simply refuse to allow the options to even be considered.

> @"Axl.8924" said:

> I noticed hybrid chrono is still rated highly for raids on discretize not sure how up to date it is.

>

> https://discretize.eu/builds/mesmer/hybrid-chronomancer

PvE is not a particularly hostile environment for Mesmer of any kind, but shows us how even there, the damage concerns and numbers tuning is badly off. Mesmer lacks good dps outside of being reliant on a few traits in a single line of an elite specialization to attain comparable numbers to others. This is noticed in WvW in large scale where suddenly clones and shatters can no longer be appropriately used and thus the damage drops off to practically nothing, so Mesmer was even more reliant on utilities.

This illustrates why the profession resource needs a rework and potentially changes to phantasms as well. Consistency and reliability need to be improved so numbers tuning can be fair across the board, in PvE and PvP game modes. Current design was always flawed, but the devs did not want to change it in the past.

> @"Lhiash.4910" said:

> I would like to suggest a huge and revolutionary change - total rework of invulnerability skills. Invuln in WvW is the most OP defense, regardless if it is full invuln, warrior's endure pain style 0 dmg or mesmer's/thief's evade spam. The biggest issue with being invuln is that it scales infinitely, you can tank 1 or 100 people without any difference, because you simply cannot die for the duration of the skill. Another is there is basically no counterplay, blocking another defensive skill can be worked around with unblockable skills, but there is no way to go through invulns.

> The suggestion would be to replace all the skills that grant invulnerability with ones that grant barrier, it would still make you survive a lot of pressure but you couldn't just walk into danger without any thought and ignore all pressure.

While that suggestion may make sense from your point of view, imagine the time to kill of large groups dropping fairly dramatically without invulnerability and evades. Maybe making it counters or by changing invulnerability to resistance and stability stacks... and barrier. Of course then you have interactions with boon durations, and creating situations where an enemy is effectively invulnerable even longer... perhaps they are better off just leaving it as invulnerability or evade. Time should be a resource, one should not be trying to encourage time to kill to be shorter, it makes the game less interesting.

Thanks for the revised notes on the proposed changes, for me this is valued more than the actual changes themselves. Keeping us in the loop and considering our input, especially when it is echoed by a majority of players from different preferred gameplay modes and preferred styles of play is an important step in the right direction.

As primarily a Mesmer player, the changes do little to bring Mesmer back into the large scale combat scene and do nothing to affect it’s roaming capabilities. A major issue with roaming is not feeling like one individual can make an impact, and thus much of the population does not bother playing WvW at all. A major issue for Mesmer is that if clones and phantasms instantly exploding in large scale combat, never getting to use shatters at full or even half strength means reliance only on utilities. This more than anything limits any changes done to Mesmer, relegating them to being functionally useless changes most of the time.

No need to repeat what I have said earlier, these changes will not greatly affect WvW, the gameplay will still be the same overall. It will not shift from grouping up and using whatever profession is providing the best boons to allies, or does the most AoE damage.

Changes would be well served when focused on diversifying the gameplay, making small scale and roaming more impactful and creating some changes to Mesmer that improve reliability dramatically while also normalizing their output in any damage or condition output significantly. Specifically Mesmer here because it is likely still the most complained about profession, and as a Mesmer player I want to be able to enjoy being in large scale without feeling like all I offer is portals, stealths, and revives. I want to bring some damage, some condition cleansing or boon stripping comparable to corrupts. I want to finally be able to be balanced around some numbers tuning instead of being at the mercy of the variance in gameplay modes imposed by the destroyable resource of clones.

Last note, changes to Chaotic Interruptions seem fine, the cooldown reduction seems a bit less than half as strong as immobilize. That is totally okay though, and feels even more thematic this way, please get that implemented so those of us that enjoy having CI available in PvP can use it again.

Chaotic Interruptions usage in large scale WvW is always running into stability, where there are entirely too much stability and little way to rip it as is. For small scale the cooldown reduction simply is not quite large enough to make it even half as strong as the immobilize had been. In short, the change does nothing to improve reliability or functionality of Mesmer in WvW so it is unlikely to cause massive disruptions in the gameplay there, large or small scale.

I still feel that all the proposed changes fail to actually affect WvW much, instead managing to merely attempt to balance some small things that were broken (or turned off completely) in the game overall. The focus right now needs to be shifting burst and reliability for some professions other than Mesmer to adjust the balance. The improvements in communications from ANet are very well received however and I hope they will continue to be as forthcoming in the future and responding to the feedback we are giving overall.

I really hope they consider improving clone and phantasm reliability in large scale combat and in situations where they can be interrupted or killed nearly instantly.

What problem is such a proposition solving?

Seems to me that professions with access to a lot of stability are still going to have access to a lot of it, those with numerous methods to break stuns passively will still have that as well. Just seems like all it does is shift the power in favor of professions that can apply these effects in greater quantity and frequency than others... and professions with minimal access to stuns and dazes are still going to be unable to break through stability.

While I am looking forward to seeing some reliability included in Chaos Storm, I would really like to see the Cooldown reduced by 10 seconds (5 to 7 seconds is probably more fair though) since it’s potential for long duration interruption has been massively reduced (same for the CD on Lesser Chaos Storm). Coupled with other proposed changes, I foresee the changes overall just pushing the profession into a different build that ends up just as annoyingly strong, but in a different way that ends up requiring a set of nerfs that hit far more than what is needed to keep the profession feeling smooth.

Other possible changes that would help with the loss of multiple interrupts off a single cast of Chaos Storm include: increasing durations of conditions and boons by a second or so each, or applying multiple instances of each condition instead. Basically, whatever is necessary to keep the area denial aspect at least a bit. Choosing to stand in a chaos storm should be a dangerous choice indeed (given the long cooldown).

My concern arises with cooldown resets on CI as well, historically those are dangerous things to implement (look at Continuum/Split and Mimic, so many skills and utilities nerfed because those exist).

A solid recap of the requests of several of us compiled into one thread. Easy to read, implementation can be done in steps, allowing focused adjustments with little chance for it becoming too overpowered as each change automatically increases reliability but always comes paired with a reduction in maximum potential. PvP and WvW players all over would be happy to finally be able to see the Mesmer nearly all the time. Destroyable resources and damage sources are nearly always a poor choice in games, even other genres have these same kinds of balancing problems with pet classes, champions, or heroes. It is not a problem unique to Professions in GW2, so much of what is suggested here is just what is seen in other games as well, where multiple avoidance chances are removed in favor of making reliable skills that can then easily be adjusted numerically.

> @"Xstein.2187" said:

> All they are saying is that no other class has this much variance based on their mechanics, leading to balancing problems.

Thanks for stating this so eloquently.

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" I have no need to argue with you, as I am not trying to convince you of what you seem to think I am. My statements point out the core issue and show how they are not the same issue present in other profession forums. Neither am I stating that Mesmer is underpowered or overpowered, but that by design they have an inherent flaw that makes balancing them like other professions an inevitable failure to solve the problem. Reducing the variance by solving the resource denial issue would actually solve quite a bit of the problems that other professions have with what to expect from a Mesmer. You may try being less aggressive towards individuals, as it is fine to disagree with others, but making attacks on them as individuals is not proving your point (that there are definitely issues with every profession, some much easier to tackle than others).

Mesmer issues cannot be solved by tuning their numbers like other professions because of the unreliability of their resource in given situations. Solve the core issue of their resource control and management and the rest can then actually be numerically tuned, leave it as is and from one game situation to the next the difference in variance of reliability of resource will always remain and cause problems with balance. Furthermore, all other changes numerically will continue to remain ineffective at resolving the pleas of the masses to fix (nerf) Mesmer.

> @"Taygus.4571" said:

> > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > That is because mesmer was busted as hell and needed to be nerfed a lot to bring it into balance. It is only now that Mesmer is either at or below the level of most classes.

> >

> > Mesmer has **EVER** been balanced around the idea of higher variance due to their resource being both **ONLY** in combat **AND** destroyable. No other profession is punished by their own resource so heavily,

>

> No other? Necromancers want a word with you.

>

> OP...if you haven't been playing for 6 years....why are you complaining about mesmer nerfs? You know nothing about the class anymore.

>

Necromancer’s life force bar can be destroyed before it even gets to be used? Interesting, I was pretty sure there is opportunity to use it before it gets destroyed. Can AoE keep a Necromancer from being able to even use their resource at all?

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > @"Taygus.4571" said:

> > > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> > > > That is because mesmer was busted as hell and needed to be nerfed a lot to bring it into balance. It is only now that Mesmer is either at or below the level of most classes.

> > >

> > > Mesmer has **EVER** been balanced around the idea of higher variance due to their resource being both **ONLY** in combat **AND** destroyable. No other profession is punished by their own resource so heavily,

> >

> > No other? Necromancers want a word with you.

> >

> > OP...if you haven't been playing for 6 years....why are you complaining about mesmer nerfs? You know nothing about the class anymore.

> >

>

> You beat me to the punch. Though I was going to bring up Elementalists. I went through this whole rigmarole on another thread on another profession forum, wherein somebody else decided that their profession was uniquely discouraged above all else due to their design. The fact is that everybody has their problems.

Elementalist can be denied their ability to switch attunements due to AoE?

Please understand people, we are talking about a resource here, not the fact that they are summons or that no other profession has summons either. Being balanced around having summons is different than those summons being your resource. Elementalist, Ranger, and Necromancer do not rely on having them out to use defenses (like diversion or distortion), and their damage skills are not all scaling with number of illusions out at a time.

What we as a Mesmer community may desire is almost always ignored, because the non Mesmer community invariably cries about symptoms that have always been a result of the balance point of the profession (which forces greater variance and less reliability).

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:

> That is because mesmer was busted as hell and needed to be nerfed a lot to bring it into balance. It is only now that Mesmer is either at or below the level of most classes.

Mesmer has **EVER** been balanced around the idea of higher variance due to their resource being both **ONLY** in combat **AND** destroyable. No other profession is punished by their own resource so heavily, the reliance of the Mesmer is nearly complete when it comes to their AI. Rangers can replace them frequently and simply focusing down their resource is generally considered a poor use of time in small skirmishes, while they suffer the same problems as Mesmer in large scale combat.

In short, it is by the very core design of clones and illusions in general that there have ever been issues with Mesmer. I can concede that several skills may have had a bit more functionality that may have been initially intended, but the profession has also ever been at the mercy of their very design, both offense and damage mitigation being tied to their illusion production, death, or uptime all end up making so many unique elements necessary for the profession which in turn makes them at an "unfair" advantage or disadvantage based on the situation.

Reducing the variance of the profession would in turn reduce the reliance on any one particular broken thing, rather than how they have handled it to this point.

Chaos storm daze being only on first tick would dramatically reduce it's strength. They should add a stacking effect on the storm, daze on first tick and after they take 3 hits from the storm they get dazed again. Then it's predictable, and the enemy can still tank it if they want, but they know standing in it is still not good, then the skill still gets to perform it's functionality, that of zoning enemies off that area.

Another option would be to reduce the CD on it, since it is currently fairly long.

Answering the questions:

No, it largely will not affect how I play WvW.

I feel the changes will have little impact other than shuffling a profession here or there in big groups, gameplay is still the same.

Indifferent to these changes, they do not resolve major issues (sea of red still exists, small group and roamers contributions almost worthless).

Changes fail to really make any positive changes that will actually change the style of combat or gameplay.

I expect people will adapt, it may be different in profession choices, but the play remains the same.

Try focusing on what makes WvW work instead, it is the general push and ebb of the maps themselves that are extremely lacking. I could see rallying NPCs together and building or choosing a tower to attempt to assault, done by small groups (as in large scale combat, such groups of NPCs would just die in a sea of red anyhow). Even solo play would allow for building up of troops to assault a camp, tower, or even keep. This kind of change is what the mode needs, not just a profession exchange in larger scale combat.

Picking a specific traitline used to come with stats attached to that line, when they moved away from that they changed the game drastically and the function of those traits in turn changed. When they did so, the differences between running one line or another ended up becoming less pronounced, and thus we have this world of traits that are always competing against each other.

The result of having weapon traits is such that when you are in a specific trait line, you are doubly incentivized to pick that trait, making the other traits have to be extremely good to compete, or one is wasting their efforts being in that line at all. For several professions, that is a major drawback to going down a line without picking that weapon. By incorporating the CD reductions into the trait lines as passives, the design focus for those trait lines become centralized more around the weapon, and therefore builds become more focused around those weapons, making weapon choice almost define the build more frequently. This allows for more actual choice of traits, and less illusion of choice, it also means not having to make traits too strong that are on a column with a weapon trait.

In short, there is a lot of benefit to implementing weapon traits baseline to a line for each profession, making balance decisions easier both in design and in game play. Replacement of existing traits do not need to be huge, and can be used to adjust current balance requests for professions in general, combining a lot of different workloads into a small number of changes at one time.

Mirage bursts application of conditions by use of Infinite Horizon, which make all the clones perform some evade frames while using the Ambush attack that is applying a lot of conditions. For the usual condition build this means just projectiles, which can be destroyed, reflected, LoS’d, or avoided by strafing the line of the bolt itself. It is less a waiting game in general, as we hold our dodges for when you are going for a burst and attempt to turn your attack into our victory. My suggestion would be to solve avoiding application by looking for the Mirage Cloak, attack animations, and getting used to moving out of the line of fire first most, then try to bait their dodges with a false start burst so you do not waste your burst on their dodges.

Clones need a rework, I have detailed many ways to achieve that since the start of the game, why it needs to happen, and how to roll out such a change systematically with small changes to make it feel smooth and able to be adapted to by the community.

> @"Curunen.8729" said:

> Loss of IP is severe handicap for many reasons and there needs to be some additional change with clones to scaffold this or simply revert.

It is pretty much this, any other changes they may have planned for the resource production and reliability for Mesmer needs to be implemented, and if they have none yet then something needs to be formulated. Plenty of good suggestions from the community, many could be worked into a balance patch, I even have some ideas no longer on these forums anymore that may be backed up on one of their servers if they care to look into the past (like 6 years or so ago).

As for everyone comparing Mesmer to other professions, no one else gets complained about like Mesmer, as often they are just overtuned... but Mesmer is broken by design and has to be balanced in a way that accounts for a resource not always at 100% full potential because their resource can be destroyed. Necro doesn’t suffer from that, so it’s numbers can be tuned. Same for Engineer, or Thief, or Ranger (at least they can swap pets on a short enough CD or use Soulbeast and not worry about having their pet up)... none of them are reliant on a resource that can be destroyed within an autoattack or some AoE. No other profession potentially loses damage just because they chose to play that profession.

People need to understand, I do not think Mesmer is underpowered or overpowered either... they are balanced in an unfair way, both to non Mesmer players facing one and to the Mesmer community wanting some fair treatment when it comes to balancing.

The levers that exist for balancing are already good, the handling of those levers has been a bit lacking however.

> @"Blade of Christ.1298" said:

> > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > @"Blade of Christ.1298" said:

> > > > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > > Getting killed inside of a two second knockdown does not feel good either... condition damage may be annoying, but at least it can be cleansed, no cleansing a burst of 16k that happens in 0.5 seconds or less.

> > > >

> > > > Why bring this problem up in the Mesmer forum though?

> > >

> > > I sincerely apologize, as I stated initially, ive never even commented on post before. I thought I was in general discussion thread. I guess there isnt a way to change it now is there?

> > >

> > > and no it doesnt, regardless of the circumstances being 1 shot does not feel good, but usually with a well timed stun break or some form of block or invulnerable you can block that damage and power based builds typically cant repeated that over and over again endlessly without no break. yes you have cleanse for condi but in my personal experience running FB Bunker no amount of resistance or cleanse can out do these meta condi builds. they literally can sustain the condi pressure with no worry of "oh shoot everything is on CD and I cant deal damage now" like power builds. reapers have CD's, short as they are they still cant continually repeat it in short burst fights, same for Deadeyes, Rangers, and warriors. several times ive fought against both warriors and reapers that I lost because Rampage or death spiral but beat the next time around because those skills were on CD. I have seen in particular (wont mention names) a scourge FB pair that won every single 3-5v2 fight regardless of duration inbetween with no rest because they literally could apply conditions that fast and that often. again with power you at least have a chance with well timed defensive utilities. with condi it just keeps coming no matter how often you cleanse it or become immune to it.

> >

> > To my knowledge there is no way to move the thread, that aside, I do understand the frustration of being subject to constant high sustained damage.

> >

> > No offense intended, but it sounds like you may have encountered some strictly superior opponents. Such opponents exist for all of us, everyone has a weakness to a specific style of play. I struggle with a number of burst builds which also seem to auto attack for several thousand with every single auto attack, game is actually fairly balanced if we consider that both power and condi can be overpowered. Builds that are more general seem to actually suffer more in general... some exceptions do apply, but most lack enough damage to be a real threat or are specifically weak to a fairly common build.

>

> I guess Ill have to agree to disagree on this one because with power you actually have to continually hit for the damage to be there. with condi ive watched players jump in, apply it, and either go invulnerable or teleport away and the players they hit with those conditions die before they could do anything. and your right. their is always going to be that player/players that just wipe the floor with me because they are superior and I acknowledge that and accept that until I get better there isnt anything to be done about that. but what blows my mind is again watching high tier gold and low tier plat players still complaining about the lack of counters for players running full sustain gear with max condi damage overwhelming them and (with that being said) having never really run condi before ive taken it jumped in and even having little to no knowledge of what im doing wiped teams with it. having run power builds since day one ive never wiped a whole team before with even my necro, much less any of the others. thanks everyone for the input. guess its just something else to deal with and get over.

A surprisingly large amount of the community is not very good at adjusting their build to suit what is crushing them. It was only recently that I figured out just how much defensive, offensive, condi removal and stun removal I needed to run for facing most enemies. I still lose to better players now and again, or because I will fat finger some buttons and end up wasting important mobility or cleanses at the inappropriate time and die a few seconds later to not having that skill when I actually needed it. That said, however, it is often less about a specific build stomping me anymore. In short, you may need to adjust your build to include an extra condi cleanse or convert trait over an offensive one that helps get a kill faster and rely on better timing and sequencing of your setup into combo damage to make up for the loss of that offensive trait. My own build actually had to swap an entire traitline worth of damage traits, which felt terrible at first but is less bad than I thought it would be.

> @"BadMed.3846" said:

> > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > @"BadMed.3846" said:

> > > > @"Arekai.5698" said:

> > > > > @"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

> > > > > > @"Arekai.5698" said:

> > > > > > So how long till anet makes power mes viable in high/AT play?

> > > > > > How about, instead of nerfing condi mes for the 10th time, buff power?

> > > > >

> > > > > Zeromis from Team USA in NA is a power mirage, they have been winning nearly all monthlies here.

> > > >

> > > > Anything having to do with NA PVP doesnt hold a point.

> > >

> > > Oh and Mirage is still under powered right? Stop kidding yourself and accept you're defending the MOST broken spec in game.

> >

> > Funny thing is, we actually somewhat agree with you here, MESMER is broken, the only profession with a destroyable resource who actually becomes more vulnerable AND do less damage when their clones are dead. Less defenses and offenses simply by taking out their resource, but also by being able to fool their AI.

> >

> > The devs do need to fix the CORE problem, and not the symptoms. This means specifically not listening to people like you, because you see the issue with it being too much of everything, without seeing why that is the case.

> >

> > Keys to solving all Mesmer issues, increase reliability of skills reduce variance, increase low end damage, remove defensive abilities being as hard linked to clone existence, shift damage and control elements from AI onto the Mesmer active skills instead.

>

> Funny thing is that I totally believe in what Chromancer got and really hope that Mirage will get the same fair play balance treatment. I'll leave it up to the developers as they handled the Chrono nerfs extremely well.

Which takes us back to the simple statement that you are biased against Mesmer as a profession and will always ask for nerfs after a build comes along that seems unfair to you. Fair play is so subjective, and what you perceive as fair now is likely to change over time and then you will ask for nerfs on anything that doesn’t match your perception of fair at that point.

> @"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:

> > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > @"Lincolnbeard.1735" said:

> > > > @"Delofasht.4231" said:

> > > >phantasms are probably fine at this point. Clones remain an issue however

> > >

> > > Depends on what you think it's fine, if it's the qqers pov, yes, they're fine.

> > > All phantasms except berserker are trash.

> > > Long wind-up and low damage. In case of swordsman it doesn't even connect with npcs.

> > >

> >

> > Well I think of phantasms as a damage skill that makes a clone after 2 to 6 seconds (depending on the phantasm). The fact that the damage can be avoided is no different to me than using any other skill with an animation that displays the damage before it happens so it can be avoided. The damage from them might feel low when compared to so many other professions, but they are also producing a resource for the Mesmer.

> >

> > The difference between phantasm and clone is that clones are our resource, so them being destroyable feels bad for the Mesmer that runs into an enemy or situation in which they are killed near instantly repetitively (certain professions and many PvE and WvW situations). Worse yet, for professions that are incapable of doing that we then have an opposite problem of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of things attacking one at the same time. Weaknesses and Strengths for Mesmer revolving around whether we are allowed to have clones or not feel pretty awful to play and play against in certain circumstances. Clones are ever the problem, and as long as they can be destroyed and apply conditions or are used to apply damage (through shatters by running at the enemy) we will always have issues.

> >

> > I have posted numerous times on potential ways to solve this, and there are at least 3 or 4 different ways to achieve it, and none of it needs to be done all in one step while generally maintaining some semblance of balance along the way.

>

> I agree with the clones being indestructible and dealing no damage and I think most mesmers agree as well, the community whoever would go nuts if that happened, the monkey holo complained already that clones have too much health...

> As for phantasms, for the long animation they have their damage is simply pathetic.

> But I already said once or twice phantasm rework was one of the most awful things ever done to mesmers, phantasms used to hit harder, faster and provide faster shatters.

> It was a nerf that passed as a buff to some members of this community. But ANerf always do that to mesmers, the most flagrant example was the phantasms skills dealing like 300 damage upon skill activation, it was a nerf to stealth summoning but everyone clapped because ANerf said "hey 300 damage to help with sustain damage!".

Heck yeah phantasm damage on summon was a nerf to stealth summoning, but I did not much mind that since I was already prepared with a different build to account for that change. I have long kept backup builds for everything... except CI being disabled, because that was really uncalled for, better to have unlinked Immobilize from dazing and have it applied with weakness or cripple application instead, only 3 good sources of that on Mesmer and none applied by a Mantra.

Phantasms feel okay with Phantasmal Haste, but really the low damage for their animation probably should not be so low in general. Gameplay has become so focused on shatters as to make any other kind of build worth less by far, and makes the issues with Mesmer all the more difficult to balance.

I think the community would largely be happy if Mesmer damage were reliably avoidable, half the issue with the community is simply in feeling confused and frustrated by the multitude of damage sources that a Mesmer has. It is never as simple as just avoiding a warrior swinging a giant sword around in front of them madly... Mesmer could come from anywhere and everywhere, and that feels overwhelming for a lot of the community. I get that and can sympathize, but the solution isn’t to avoid a logical solution that keeps visuals and gameplay similar to it is now while allowing for better counterplay and more reliability in skill usage with slightly more normalized damage (and not the huge variance in damage on skills like Mind Wrack, Ambushes that apply conditions, or defenses like Distortion or Cry of Pain).

> @"BadMed.3846" said:

> > @"Arekai.5698" said:

> > > @"LolLookAtMyAP.8394" said:

> > > > @"Arekai.5698" said:

> > > > So how long till anet makes power mes viable in high/AT play?

> > > > How about, instead of nerfing condi mes for the 10th time, buff power?

> > >

> > > Zeromis from Team USA in NA is a power mirage, they have been winning nearly all monthlies here.

> >

> > Anything having to do with NA PVP doesnt hold a point.

>

> Oh and Mirage is still under powered right? Stop kidding yourself and accept you're defending the MOST broken spec in game.

Funny thing is, we actually somewhat agree with you here, MESMER is broken, the only profession with a destroyable resource who actually becomes more vulnerable AND do less damage when their clones are dead. Less defenses and offenses simply by taking out their resource, but also by being able to fool their AI.

The devs do need to fix the CORE problem, and not the symptoms. This means specifically not listening to people like you, because you see the issue with it being too much of everything, without seeing why that is the case.

Keys to solving all Mesmer issues, increase reliability of skills reduce variance, increase low end damage, remove defensive abilities being as hard linked to clone existence, shift damage and control elements from AI onto the Mesmer active skills instead.